Tracing the Genealogy of World’s Video Art

The development of Indonesian video art in the last decade has been satisfactory. Several visual art events have included video art as part of contemporary art exhibition. Video art has even invaded commercial galleries and become objects of desire for collectors. In 2003, Ruangrupa Jakarta held OK. Video Jakarta International Video Festival—in collaboration with Indonesia National Gallery—which then marks the development of video art in Indonesia. Looking back, especially in this country, the emergence of video as visual art medium is started by Teguh Ostentrik, Krisna Murti and Heri Dono when they used video for their installations in late 1980s. In early 1990s, Heri Dono incorporated video in his installation artwork with the video Hoping to Hear from You Soon (1992). Then Krisna Murti also included video in his installation artwork 12 Jam dalam Kehidupan Penari Agung Rai (12 Hours in the Life of Agung Rai, a Dancer, 1993). For this installation, Krisna Murti immersed several monitors to display documentary records about Agung Rai, a Balinese traditional dancer.

According to Krisna Murti, video medium is to video artists what paints are to painters. Video art is always presentable in close proximity to its spectators. Video provides an alternative exhibit in visual art (Krisna Murti: Kanisius, 1997: 47). In the history of the world’s modern visual art, video art is part of aesthetic social movement initiated by artists of the ‘60s. Video technology is used by artists as counter culture to mass media domination and television boom in Europe and the United States. Figures such as Nam June Paik, Richard Sierra and Joan Jonas are the first generation of artists to implement video as art language.

A video art has to at least carry four essential elements, i.e. visual art element, interactivity, theme, and communication. Having those four elements, through video and other supportive discourses, we shall find a kind of intellectual representation from the artist, which contains phenomenality, sensibility, emotion and imagination, arranged in an informative-deformative manner (Krisna Murti: Kanisius, 1999:95).

I will not detail the development of Indonesian video art within the last decade here in this writing. I will, instead, try to elaborate on how video art emerged in the beginning, from documentary video finding of WGBH Boston Public Television.

In 1973, WGBH Boston Public Television—a nonprofit broadcasting institute in Boston—produced a serial on the exploration of a new media termed as video art. Footage of this serial of video history is found in a social networking site YouTube. There are six videos in all. They featured several video artists who explore this new medium and heed to an area of technology previously limited.

 

Part I

To talk about video art is to also understand the development of mass media in the ‘60s. Television—which is an integral part of video technology phenomenon—has penetrated the smallest communal entity, i.e. the household. It has been ever-present among families with its reality shows, soap operas, commercials, midnight movies, and all kinds of rubbish. This idiot box carries the role to deliver images cramped with public images where everyone’s images are contained therein.

From this paradoxical role rose a movement encouraging each and everyone to create with their own medium. Started in 1965, when technology made a giant leap with the invention of portable video camera—which allows practically anyone to become directors, cameramen, and also sometimes the stars where they can actually see themselves in the recordings. In 1960s, a group of artists started to seek alternative spectacles, unlike what the mainstream television media has provided. To them, television has been socially damaging to a serious level.

Through technological experimentation, these artists created abstract images in their videos. During the early period, video artists often capture common occurrences yet coated with rich ideas. Video artwork has always been about human and technology. The assimilation between mass media culture and technology eventually lead to a giant leap in world art. Due to this leap, video is now considered as the new wave of art.

Video technology has turned passive audience to creators. With technological advances, now everyone can do it. Video may be regarded as a new toy, as well as a tool to express oneself differently from other present art language such as painting and sculpture.

Based on the above observation, the first video of WGBH Boston Public Television implies: the keyword for this new wave is “access”—people now has the opportunity to do what they want independently—a thing previously impossible to get. It balances communicational powers with regard to economy and political matters.

 

Part II

In the second video is described the most orthodox form of video art. In the early days of the movement, video artists often applied feedback technique combined with synthesizer. Through this combination they uncovered the possibilities of merging the medium with performance art and music. Forms and visual effects in feedback technique is the most universal method applied by video artists in combination with other art medium.

Feedback technique is a technique using electronic effect of camera and monitor. When camera is turned facing the monitor—connected to the camera—the result is an infinite image. By applying zoom and interchanging camera focus, an abstract feedback effect will appear. This feedback effect of the video—which contains the connection between camera, video, reality and illusion—is regarded as the mystery of the video.

 

Part III

The third video explains how feedback technique is used in video arts to create transcendental and mystical image. These images inspired artists of the era to combine them with photography, film, etc. In some videos, combination of feedback technique film result in psychedelic images.

In other part of the video, an artist made use of optical potential of a video camera. Video artist Frank Gillette used camera movement, zoom, and focus interplay to build fantasy. There was also Steina Vasulka who took extreme close-up in her work Let It Be.

 

Part IV

Art movement in the ‘60s gave birth to happening art—which has become an extraordinary art language—where artwork is not judged by its end result, but by the process of the making. Many video artworks made in this period adopt happening logic as their language. Video captures journey of an event toward its end. That’s why video art is also termed as time-based art because its essence is “process”.

In the fourth video is also presented ambiguity of reality created by video art. Joan Jonas presented such logic in her work. This woman artist who’s also known as a feminist used video frame and a mirror simultaneously. Jonas mentioned her bodily logic such as right eye, left eye. But, in video reality, they can be completely different because they no longer remain in their true reality—right eye may appear as left eye.

 

Part V

In the fifth video is shown how video twists the reality manifested in painting, sculpting and film. One can see from Peter Campus’ works that used computer editing technology. This technique has of course become familiar to us nowadays, yet still, upon watching Campus’ video, I was cornered by this reality-twisting technology.

In a video work presented in WGBH Boston Public Television, Campus stood facing a large sheet of paper. The paper is then torn. In that very instant, Campus’ figure is also torn by someone from behind the paper. The artist then slides himself through the tear and the man behind the paper (apparently being the artist himself) comes out from the same tear. Two realities take place in parallel. With his video technique, Campus has shown to us the concepts of presence, space and time.

 

Part VI

In the last part of this YouTube video is described how video medium creates novel landscape. This landscape shows how virtual world and reality are merged in a performance. In Ed Emshwiller’s video, the reality captured through dancers (performer) is combined with video effect on stage. In some moments the dancers became virtual—merged into the landscape formed by abstract patterns created by the video.

From all these six videos, one learns the genealogy of video art—how video art is originally a different kind of art. It emerges as a response to media technology, especially television, and is a critique to mainstream media domination that encompasses economy, cultural and political issues. Initiated as a counter movement to the media, video art becomes the seed of media art and new media art as often discussed within Indonesian contemporary visual art domain for the last five years.

Ade Darmawan—co-founder of Ruangrupa Jakarta—mentions in his essay New Media Art Infrastructure?: “Media art development will always be coherent with new technological invention which also affect the livelihood of contemporary society, unlike other material-based art medium such as painting with its canvas. New media art (media art) will continue to advance, opening itself to all novel art ideas and technologies (New Media Art Appreciation: Menbudpar, 2006: 87).

WGBH Boston Public Television’s Video: The New Wave more or less helps us to appreciate video art. There are quite a number of artists in Indonesia who try to create video artwork yet they overlook the principles of the medium itself. Since video is a culture based on mass media and technology, we need to firstly understand the culture of video technology itself to be able to master the art of it.

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